The present invention relates to a semiconductor component including a drift zone and including at least one compensation zone.
Components including a compensation zone arranged in the drift zone are also referred to as compensation components. In these components, in the off-state, that is to say when a space charge zone propagates in the drift zone, a part of the dopant charge present in the drift zone is compensated for by a dopant charge of the compensation zone. For the same dielectric strength, this permits a higher doping of the drift zone, and hence a lower on resistance than in components without compensation zones.
In compensation components, when a component is driven in the off-state and when there is a space charge zone propagating in the drift zone as a result, a charge carrier exchange occurs between the compensation zones and the surrounding drift zone, whereby the compensation zones are charged. If the component is subsequently driven in the on-state, then the charge stored in the compensation zones initially brings about a reduction of the current flow in the drift zone until the charge has flowed away, which results overall in switching delays. A pn-junction between the compensation zones and the drift zone is reverse-biased when the component undergoes transition from the off-state to the on-state, such that, in the case of compensation zones arranged in floating fashion, the compensation zones can only be discharged by using leakage currents, which takes a correspondingly long time.
In compensation components including column-type compensation zones, which are directly connected to the body zone, the dopant doses of the drift zone and of the compensation zones have to be coordinated very well with one another. This is complicated in the production of the components and can be ensured only with difficulty in the context of increasing miniaturization of the component structures.